Back of the Book

• Covid~19 cases in the whole world - 210,426,282 on Friday.
• Covid~19 deaths in the whole world - 4,409,707 on Friday.
• Covid~19 cases in the United States of America - 37,371,011 on Friday.
• Covid~19 deaths in the United States of America - 625,760 on Friday.
• Covid~19 deaths in the United States of America since our last program - 10,322.
• Covid~19 deaths in the United States of America weekly average over the last fortnight - 5,161.
• Covid~19 vaccination rate - rising.
• Covid~19 vaccination cards - Counterfeit and stolen vaccination cards are being sold.
• Afghanistan - Ending badly, as in the Republic of Viet Nam.

We talked about the apparently brisk business of selling fake or stolen vaccination cards. Some people would rather spend money, sometimes a lot of money, for a card than to get the vaccination, and a real card, for free.

We talked about the mess in Afghanistan. We talked about why "nation building" was not likely to work there.

We also talked about the threats to LGBT+∞ people in Afghanistan now that the murderously homophobic Taliban have taken over again. They say they'll be nicer this time, but they have already shot protestors, inclouding women protesting the Taliban restrictions on women.

We talked about the reports that the United States of America has spent variously on news reports that America spent $1 trillion or maybe $2 trillion on the 20 year war in Afghanistan. We also talked about the fact that besides traiing the Afghan government forces to fight the United also lavished lots of American military equipment, vehicles, aircraft, gund, munitions, on them. Train ing the government forces to fight didn't work out well, but that equipment is still there. The Taliban now have their own air force.

There is a Web page for this program.

R. Paul is on Twitter.

• Guests? Guests? We don't got no guests. We don't need no stinkin' guests! -

• Barracuda - Heart
• Baker Street - Gerry Rafferty

• I have a Web site.

• R. Paul is on Twitter.

• WBAI LSB Treasurer's Reports are here.

• If you want to do something to protect your privacy while using regular browsers, like Firefox, you can check out NOSCRIPT which gives you more control over what Web sites can learn about you.

• Search engines help us to find things on the World Wide Web. Most search engines exist not to help you find things but to allow the companies that provide the search service to data mine your searches and then sell your search history to clients so they can spam you. An alternative to getting your privacy compromised is to use the DuckDuckGo search engine.

• If you'd like to keep your browsing history private you can get yourself the Tor Browser. Using the DuckDuckGo search engine is automatic with the Tor Browser, and by accessing the DuckDuckGo search engine from the Tor Browser you are pretty much guaranteed that no one can trace searches back to you.

• Gnu Privacy Guard can help you to encrypt your data and preserve your privacy.

• For those who need some help getting started with Gnu Privacy Guard there is Gentle GPG which does a lot of the work for you.

• For the somewhat more advanced user who wants to protect his or her privacy there is the Tails OS. Tails is a live operating system that you can start on almost any computer from a USB flash drive or a DVD. It allows you to use any computer that will allow you to boot up off a USB flash drive or a DVD and it provides a lot of good security for your on-line activities. You can get the Tails OS here.